Village to install guard rail at Cherokee Well valve site

Although a pressure reduction valve to allow the village of Ruidoso to introduced water from the Cherokee Well into the Grindstone service area went into operation in early November, a change order was approved last week to add a guardrail.

The concrete vault (encasing the valve) sticks up about three feet out of the road as you come off Camelot," Village Utilities Director Randall Camp said Monday. "We couldn't make it level and were worried a driver might hit it in poor weather. We used the Department of Transportation guardrails that are designed to absorb impact. The concrete would hurt someone really bad. We were thinking of the safety of the public."

The guardrail installation added $8,750 to the $174,733 project. The change order included some other increase and decrease adjustments for a total of $9,856.

The good news is that the addition of Cherokee Well water slowed the demand on Grindstone Reservoir storage tanks to less than half of normal, and restrained the resulting drop in water level, Camp said. "It's working beautifully," he said. "We're doing lots of things to (use) water from the Alto tanks.

"Before the summer tourist arrive and the highest demand occurs, we should have an interconnection project right from the Alto tanks to the Grindstone tanks."

Needed improvements

During flooding after the Little Bear Fire in June, the village wells at the Northfork of Eagle Creek were damaged by mudflows.

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Village officials also were prevented from diverting water from Eagle Creek or the Rio Ruidoso during runoff in heavy summer rain events because of contamination from fire ash and silt washed down from the surrounding mountain watershed with no vegetation to slow and filter it. The village's reservoirs already were low because of a prolonged drought.

Most of the water serving residents and tourists currently comes from village wells, many in the Alto Reservoir area.

A project to create a diversion point lower on the Rio Ruidoso into Grindstone also is moving forward, Camp said. "We have full sign-off by (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). I want that installed by the time the snowmelt occurs (from the mountains). We're trying to fast track it, but procurement can be somewhat cumbersome. We thought we could proceed under the original emergency (declared after damage from the Little Bear Fire and subsequent flooding), but we were told we would have to go through the full procurement process."

Once the bid is awarded, the work should progress quickly, because little digging is involved. The line, a rugged design that can lie on top of a road or to be buried, initially would be exposed on top, Camp said.

"We haven't been able to divert for a long time," he said. "Every time the temperature drops, it freezes up on the mountain and the water coming off the mountain (in the Rio Ruidoso flow) drops. Right now, it is flowing below the legal limit."

As measured at the Hollywood gauge on the border between the village and the city of Ruidoso Downs, the village usually cannot divert from the river if the flow doesn't reach 6 cubic feet per second, unless an emergency has been declared.

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